The Most Amazing "Cauliflower" Recipe

This recipe calls for cauliflower but I found this great broccoflower at Nature's Fare and couldn't resist. Its flavour isn't as strong as cauliflower and it just looks so cool. I would certainly buy it again.










I made this with the real greek yoghurt. I used organic but it was still milk. You could try using soy or coconut and I would be interested in hearing how it worked out for you. The greek yoghurt is thick so it really coated the broccoflower and stayed on throughout the baking.

It was quite spicy so I used the leftover yoghurt mix as a dip. It seemed to be less spicy when it hadn't been cooked.

Spicy Broccoflower (adapted from Shape Magazine)

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 head broccoflower
1 1/2 cups plain Greek yogurt
Juice of 1 lemon
2 tablespoons chile powder
1 tablespoon cumin
1 teaspoon curry powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and lightly grease a small baking sheet with vegetable oil. Set aside.

Trim the base of the broccoflower to remove any green leaves and the woody stem.

In a medium bowl, combine the yogurt with the lemon juice, chile powder, cumin, garlic powder, curry powder, salt and pepper.

Dunk the broccoflower into the bowl and use your hands to smear the marinade evenly over its surface. (Excess marinade can be stored in the refrigerator in an airtight container for up to three days and used with tofu or other veggies.)










Place the broccoflower on the prepared baking sheet and roast until the surface is dry and lightly browned, 40 minutes. The marinade will make a crust on the surface.










Let the broccoflower cool for 10 minutes before cutting it into wedges.










It was delicious! I could have eaten it all!




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Masala Fusion Cuisine of India Restaurant Review

When I was in Uganda, I did a few restaurant reviews because I often looked for reviews when we were going to be out for the day. My blog got lots of hits so obviously restaurant reviews are popular! I decided to add a few to this blog as well.

I doubt this restaurant is vegan as Indian food uses ghee, clarified butter, but as a vegetarian option, it was amazing. Lots of choices for veggie and carni lovers.





We had one order of veggie samosas. There were two samosas and a dish of tamarind chutney. The pastry was flaky and the filling was mostly potato with peas and onions. Served piping hot.





We then chowed down on kadai paneer, chana masala. We ordered one dish medium and one dish hot and the chana masala (chickpea curry) was HOT! Not so unbelievable that we couldn't eat it but certainly hot enough to make us both sniffle and appreciate the yoghurt cucumber that I had ordered.





We also had one order of basmati rice and one plain naan. Both of those were plenty for the two of us.





We were stuffed and took leftovers home for lunch. We added two more orders of naan to bulk it up a bit but there was plenty of food for us both for both meals.

Total, including tip: $40. No drinks, just water.

We will certainly go again.

Address: 103 - 2106 Harvey Avenue, Kelowna, across from the mall, next to A&W.

They are closed on Mondays.

11.95$ Buffet lunch from 11:30-2:00 the rest of the week.

Website: masalafusionkelowna.com


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Cooking the Book: Cook with Kindness

I love cookbooks and I always want to buy more and more and more. I look through them and if there is one recipe that looks tempting then I want the whole book! Corey suggested that if I wanted to add to my cookbook collection, I should maybe start "cooking the book" and forcing myself to cook three recipes from a cookbook each week for a month to work my way through at least 12 recipes before leaping to my next book. Makes sense.

I decided to start with one of my books that is already on my shelf to see if i can actually do it.

Cook with Kindness is a book published in Canada that my sister-in-law gave to me. It's the best friend of the sister of one of her best friends who wrote it. Not only is it vegan but it's also gluten free. It's a beautiful book.



I have made the recipe on the cover, the peanut butter cups, and they are as delicious and decadent as they look.

I have also made the flax crackers twice and they are scrumptious. They store forever and can be flavoured with spices. I made my second batch with onion flakies. For us, we like to sprinkle salt on top before they bake and we added more onion flakes than we thought they needed and it worked out perfectly. It was also suggested to use salted, roasted sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds to add more saltiness. All my seeds were raw in my recipes.

One recipe covers almost an entire cookie sheet. Make sure you line the cookie sheet with parchment paper.

3/4 cup flax seeds
3/4 cup water
1/4 cup sesame seeds
1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
2 tbsp hemp seeds
1/2 tsp sea salt (I added more and add another spice of your choice as desired)

Mix the flax seeds and water in a bowl and leave for an hour until all the water is absorbed. It makes a gluey mess. Kinda gross looking. Add everything else.

Spread onto the parchment paper and bake at 250 for an hour. Turn off the oven and leave it in the oven until it's cool. Break into pieces and store in an airtight container.



Tonight we are having Roasted Squash, Garlic and Red Lentil Soup. It,s a blustery rainy evening so it's a good choice. I'm using the hubbard squash from our garden that is leftover from thanksgiving dinner. It's tasty! Garlicky but the garlic is roasted so not overly so. So far the recipes are yummy!




Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Roasted Veggies

It's not quite officially fall but the fall veggies are coming out so we made our first batch of roasted veggies tonight for dinner. The temperature is supposed to drop below freezing at the airport so the gardens will soon be cleaned out. It did snow in Calgary yesterday... That is a little depressing as it is only September 9th.







The beauty of roasted veggies is that almost any veggie can be used. Our mix today had baby potato, patipan squash, zucchini, carrot, celery, baby eggplant, garlic, and broccoli. Normally we would have added cubes of onion but we suddenly realized that we had none! We also often add cubes of tofu.

I roasted an acorn squash and beets at the same time to eat with the roasted veggie mix. Corey doesn't like beets so I keep them separate and the acorn squash tends to get too mushy.







Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.

Get the root vegetables you want. No need to peel unless you are adding beets directly to the mix in which case I would peel those. Cut them into cubes about 1 inch square.

Mix all the veggies together in a large bowl. Drizzle olive oil over the veggies and several pinches of salt, cracks of black pepper, and shakes of italian herb mix. You could use any spices you like.

Mix, mix, mix then spread the veggies out over one or two cookie sheets. You don't want the veggies crammed together or else they won't cook properly. Put them in the oven and wait. After 15 minutes, stir the veggies, switch the trays if you have two on separate levels, then leave them to bake some more.

Total cooking time is about an hour depending on the type of veggies and the thickness of your trays. Darker cookie trays take less time to cook.

As for the squash, I cut it in half lengthwise, then half widthwise, then into two pieces each to end up with eight pieces. Cut out the seeds, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and place skin side down on the tray. Leave in the oven with the veggies, about an hour or so, depending on the size of the squash.

My beets I just top and tail, rinse, and put directly on the bbq. Once they are black all around and I can stick a fork in them, I take them off the bbq, let them cool and peel them. You can do the same in the oven but they won't turn black. You'll have to test them for when they are soft enough to peel. I've heard that when they are soft you can take them out and put them into a paper bag to sweat for a few minutes and the peel comes off very easily. I've never tried.




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Kale Chips

Welcome back to me! It's been a year since I've blogged here because being vegan in Uganda was a bit harder than in Canada. Not impossible though as there is a plethora of fruits and veggies but still not as vegan friendly as home.







It is garden time here and Mum has beautiful big kale plants lining one side of the plot. We are making kale chips to use it up (as well as freezing it for smoothies) and enjoying the crispy healthy snack. So far we have only used salt and pepper as flavours but I am sure we will soon move onto chili and other spices. Maybe cumin?

Easy peasy lemon squeezie...

Kale Chips

1 bunch kale (about 12 leaves)
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt
Pepper

2 cookie sheets

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Tear the kale leaves off the ribs into fair sized pieces. The size they break to is what I leave them at because they shrink a lot as they dry.

Wash the leaves well and dry in a salad spinner or with a cloth. Don't use paper towel. It's a waste. Just a tea towel works and then the towel dries on its own. I put half the leaves in the spinner at once so split the leaves into two bunches.

Put 1 tbsp olive oil into a bowl and toss in half the leaves. Swirl them around with your hands. It may not seem like enough olive oil but it will spread and get into all the nooks and crannies of the kale.

Spread the kale onto a cookie sheet. It's ok if the kale covers the cookie sheet because it will shrink but you don't want a double layer. Sprinkle with salt and pepper (or other spices.)

Do the other half of the leaves with the other 1 tbsp oil and spread them onto a second cookie sheet.

Bake for 45 minutes, shaking the pans and switching the level of the pans after each 15 minutes (so the pan on the bottom goes to the top rack and the other goes to the bottom rack.)

If the leaves are mostly crispy, turn off the oven and leave the pans in there as the oven cools. Be careful though that they don't burn. Burnt kale stinks and doesn't taste very nice!

Let cool and store in an airtight container.





This kale covered the pan before being dried.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad